Longing
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: Bookverse, oneshot. Her skin was on fire, at war with her insides. There was a bitter edge to the pain in her stomach, like an opened fist she wanted something, wanted it horribly. It was nameless and faceless but she could taste it on her tongue and


Elphaba was adept at living inside her own mind for brief periods, especially when there was simply no one else to talk to. She was fourteen, sitting in the hot Quadling summer sun outside of her house, her skinny legs dangling off the edge of the porch supported by long, thin, wooden stilts. She closed her eyes against the bright, loamy humidity of the day, the air so heavy with moisture it stung at her lungs and skin. But she didn't mind. Much more intense pain clung to the low slung end of her stomach and her hips. She knew if she looked she would see the dark blood staining the white cloth tucked neatly inside her underwear. She wanted to stare at it and deny it at the same time.

She drew her knees to her chest , squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, and buried her face in the wine-dark fabric of her frock. Her spectacles pressed into the small scar at the top of her nose. Her head and shoulders were hidden by her unbraided hair, a curtain over her emotions, churning as they were within her. Her skin was on fire, at war with her insides. There was a bitter edge to the pain in her stomach, like an opened fist; she wanted something, wanted it horribly. It was nameless and faceless but she could taste it on her tongue and feel it in her hands. It made her want to cry burning tears and scream and throw things and jump into the bog below and just _die_.

Adrenaline coated her every nerve. She was taut, on edge, alert; watchful for something she had never seen.

Every fiber of her burned the inside edge of her traitor skin.

She _wanted_. She _longed_. She _yearned_. For something, for anything.

No, she knew what it was. She wanted for love. She wanted a mother. She wanted _her _mother with the fierce wordlessness of a toddler.

She stares up at the muggy redness of the sky, nearly indistinguishable from that of the ground.

_Mama_, she thinks without thinking, _I need you_.

Elphaba did not dream. She had had living dreams as a little girl, living nightmares in her glass toy. She did not need the same pain when she slept, and her mind had learned to hide her from it. But that night, as she had the night before, with her body wakening cell by cell and nothing she could do to prevent it, she dreamed.

_Where they were, was cool and dry, so unlike Quadling Country. There was rich grass, firm solid ground beneath their feet. The sky was blue, fading into a starry indigo twilight, pure and clean, dark against pinpricks of light. _

_She had changed from Elphaba's remembrances, as if she had grown as well. The hair was longer, lighter; pulled back neatly from her face. The roundness of pregnancy was gone, of course. She seemed much shorter, but then Elphaba was six years older than she had been before, and quite a bit taller. _

_She spoke as if they had never been apart, laying her delicate hand easily on the girl's shoulder, pulling her closer, inviting her to lay her head against the clavicle that was somehow the softest pillow. Elphaba did, drawing herself in nearer and nearer as they sat, delighting wordlessly in the presence of her Mama, at last. She did not question whether or not she had died. She did not much care, even so young. Clearly, if she was, her recent skeptical musings had been wrong and there was an Otherworld; if she was not, it didn't really matter. But a feeling of disloyalty nagged at her young heart, still tender and vulnerable when one hit upon a crack in its formidable armor. How could she have condemned her mother to nothingness, and herself to that absence, with her disbelief? _

_Melena didn't say anything, though it seemed as if she knew what her daughter was thinking. She pulled the girl in yet closer, stroking her hair gently. For the first time in her life, Elphaba felt completely safe. She felt the angry turmoil of her innards cease as she breathed the summerscented, dirt-rich air surrounding her. She closed her eyes, gently, and relaxed completely against the once again familiar shape of her mother. _

_Against the theater of her eyelids, unbidden and unbearable, came the image of her mother as a corpse, six years in the boggy ground, reaching out for her. Elphaba felt the urge to run and to vomit commingle, the adrenaline rush through her again, her twisted feelings and anxieties returning in a flash. Her eyes flew open. _

She was awake. Sitting up in bed, blood once again having leaked onto the sheets around her in the vagaries of her dream-turned nightmare. The feeling of unquenchable longing settled over her skin and curled into her stomach again, and Elphaba Thropp prepared for a long wait.


End file.
